


Not An Eating Disorder

by kahlee_116



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Autumn Langst Gift Exchange 2018, Eating Disorders, Gen, Gift Exchange, Read the Title, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 00:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15983420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahlee_116/pseuds/kahlee_116
Summary: Lance does not have an eating disorder, he knows this. But he still can't bring himself to eat some days.





	Not An Eating Disorder

**Author's Note:**

> This is for @shygeek1999 on tumblr. I struggled with what to write for quite a while before it finally hit me that this was the story that needed to be written.

Lance was hungry. He hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, and as a result had woken up at 1 pm. He decided to just eat his cereal then, even though it would throw off his whole routine. Two hours later, Shiro would be back from his errands to take Lance and Keith to the psychologist’s office. Shiro always tried to schedule the appointments so that none of the residents had to go alone.

It was a good day today. For Lance, anyway. He couldn’t really speak for anyone else. After waking up, eating, and grabbing his phone, he had eaten some food at around three before the appointment at four. He hadn’t been able to finish it though, and ended up putting it in the fridge for tomorrow. He went to his psych appointment, and it was good. The psychologist, Coran, usually had Lance doing some kind of craft, or artsy project, but they hadn’t started a new one since he finished his last one two sessions ago. He and Coran had a lot to talk about, because it had been almost a month between this session and the last one. Lance usually had his sessions every other week, but two weeks ago, he and his parents had been on vacation. It was allowed, taking your child from the group home temporarily. So, Lance told Coran all about his vacation, how they had piled the family into the car with all of their stuff and gone camping.

After he and Keith both got done with their appointments, Shiro drove them back to the house. The ride home was awkward, with Shiro trying to ask them both how it had gone, as he always did; neither of them really telling him anything substantial, as no one ever did.

________

The next day, Lance had woken up at around eleven, as opposed to one. Looking back on it, he supposed that his therapy session had helped him to not toss and turn so much that night. He got up and grabbed his phone and ate his cereal downstairs. Shiro always made the teens put all their electronics downstairs at night, to ensure that they actually slept at night. Not that it did much to help insomnia. There wasn’t really a schedule to those living in the recovery home. There were group activities that they were encouraged to participate in, but they weren’t mandatory. After eating his cereal, he went to his bedroom and just… noodled around on his phone. Hunk and Pidge had gone out to some robotics event for a few days that Lance wasn’t really too interested in.

At around two, he started getting hungry, but couldn’t go downstairs to eat, even though he knew he had those leftovers from yesterday. Instead, he pulled out the container of sunflower seeds he had in the drawer in his bedside table. It was a small container, really only meant for the bad days when Lance couldn’t go and eat some food.

Later, around six that day, Lance finally was able to go eat said leftover rice stuff. That’s what it was, just rice with bits in it. It wasn’t the best, but it was food. There also hadn’t been a lot of it there, so Lance could still feel the hunger gnawing at his stomach even after he was done. He didn’t have an eating disorder. Really. It was just that on days like this, he couldn’t find the courage, or the willingness to go find some food for himself. If he had been the only one there, sure, then he could easily go down to the kitchen and make a sandwich or something. But, no. Shiro was in the house, he had the week off at work. Keith was there, too, but he hardly ever left his room either.

Lance hadn’t told anyone about his problem. He knew that he probably should tell at least Coran, or Allura, the “mother” figure of the house. He was here in this house to get better, after all. But he just couldn’t. They’d try to find a solution. Or tell him to just eat. Or have Shiro say he didn’t care when Lance ate, just that he did. But Lance knew that it wouldn’t really help. He still wouldn’t be able to just get up and _eat_.

At around seven that night, Allura sent a message to the group chat with all the members of the house saying that she had gotten held up at work and would be home late. Shiro usually made dinner for Allura when she came home, and whoever wanted it, so that was usually a good time for Lance to go downstairs and join them for some food.

Allura got back that night around ten, having had an extremely busy day. She worked as a social worker, part of the reason that she and Shiro had started the recovery home for kids with traumatic pasts, or past events in their lives.  When she did get home, Shiro yelled up the stairs to the teens’ rooms that there was food for whoever wanted it.

 _Finally_ , Lance thought to himself. Jesus, he was hungry. He walked downstairs, faking his casualness as he approached the dining room table. He looked at the food on the table. Grilled chicken and vegetables. He was practically salivating as he sat down to eat some food. Thankfully, Allura was also very hungry, having had a very long day at the hospital and on her feet, and she just started piling the food onto her plate. Lance tried to go slower, to make it look like he wasn’t as ravenous as he really was, but he was so hungry and wasn’t really sure how much he succeeded at that.

After a day of not eating, Lance’s body was exhausted and he just wanted to go the fuck to sleep. After saying thank you to Shiro for making food, he went up to his room to grab his phone and put it on the charger.

________

As soon as Lance woke up that day, he knew it was going to be a hunger day, just as it had been yesterday. He went downstairs, ate his cereal as he always did, then went into his room, as he always did.

He started feeling hungry around noon, lunchtime, but knew that he didn’t want to go and get food. So, he pulled out his container of sunflower seeds. It was already half empty after yesterday, but that didn’t stop Lance from eating the seeds until he was sick of them and the container was nearly empty.

Lance killed time messing around on his phone, distracting himself from the pain in his stomach that came from not eating enough for the past two days. It took its toll, not eating. There was soreness in Lance’s back, his legs too, and a general lack of energy and motivation.

It was around four pm when Lance first tried to go downstairs to eat. He stood at the top of the stair, but a little off center, so he wasn’t fully facing the stairs. _Come on. Just walk down the stairs. It’s not that difficult._ Lance didn’t walk down the stairs. Instead, he went back into his room and tried to sleep for a while, to preserve energy.

The second time he tried, it was nearing six. Again, Lance stood at the top of the stairs, trying to go down, to eat, to take care of himself, to get over his _fucking anxiety and just do it._ Again, he turned and went back into his room. But unlike before, he didn’t try to sleep. Instead, he stood in the middle of the room, holding his hand over his mouth holding back a scream holding back all the pain the tried to break free of his body. _What is wrong with me, why can’t I just do this, why am I_ like _this?_ There were tears in his eyes, threatening to break free and fall, and Lance knew that he wanted to just cry, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t get the tears to fall. And that hurt him, possibly worse than the hunger that consumed him.

A few hours later, after Lance had regained his composure, Keith walked into his room with purpose in his steps. He stood in front of Lance’s bed and quietly observed Lance for a moment.

“Uhhh… Is there any specific reason you came in here, Keith, or are you just going to stand there staring at me?” Lance asked, confused as to why Keith just came into his room and started existing there.

Keith’s stony expression didn’t change as he said, “I know you haven’t been eating lately, Lance.”

Lance’s heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t wanted anyone to find out, they would just fuss over him. The others didn’t need to concern themselves with Lance. There was enough worry to go around with just himself worrying about it. Lance decided to play it cool instead of confirming the truth.

“Sure, I have,” Lance said with a small smile, knowing how to lie convincingly. “Okay, maybe not a whole lot, but I just don’t really need to eat a whole lot.” _Uh oh_. That last bit was a screw up. He should have said that he just hadn’t been too hungry lately.

Keith saw right through the act and kept pushing Lance to tell him the truth. He raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “You are a teenage boy Lance, you need to eat a lot more than you have been.”

And yeah, Lance knew that Keith was just trying to look out for him, but he hadn’t known until now how much he really cared. He slumped in defeat, choosing to give in to that care, and let someone really take care of him for once. “Just because I need to eat doesn’t mean that I can, you know,” he said in a small voice.

At this, Keith looked more confused than he had before. “You haven’t left your room except in the morning. I notice things, you know. So tell me what’s up, Lance.” Keith sat down on the bed next to Lance as he said that. He knew that in order to get to Lance, he would have to be gentle, not the impulsive burst of anger that he usually was.

“I just… I don’t know, can’t eat sometimes,” Lance said, curling into himself in a subconscious effort to hide. “I can usually do it, I just haven’t been able to recently.” Despite his decision to just give in, it was hard admitting weakness, and something that he had hid for a long time before then.

“Well, why not?” asked Keith. “It’s not always an issue, is it?”

“Well… I just, like, can’t go downstairs to eat when someone else is down there, already existing, you know? Have you ever had that?” Lance asked, desperate to turn the conversation away from him, even though he knew how helpful it was to his health.

Keith ignored the question, simply responding to Lance’s response. “So, is it an anxiety thing, where you feel like you’re bugging the person?”

Lance hadn’t known that Keith was so good at reading people. He was usually so unsure of what other people were thinking, not really understanding social cues. Lance was somewhat surprised that Keith had picked up on it, albeit with a tiny inaccuracy in his conclusion. It wasn’t that Lance felt like he was bugging the person, more that he felt anxious about being judged for his food decisions. But Lance chose not to let Keith know that, he would just try to fix that and reassure Lance that no one was going to judge him, something that Lance already knew, intellectually. But just because he knew it would be fine didn’t necessarily make the fear go away.

“Yeah… I just don’t really wanna feel like I’m the only person in the house eating, I guess,” Lance said, not really liking the conversation.

“So… you don’t like eating by yourself if there’s someone else there who isn’t eating,” Keith clarified.

“Yes! Exactly, Keith. It’s fine if I’m all by myself, but once someone else is added to the equation, I just want to eat with that person, and feel weird if I’m doing it myself,” Lance tried to explain it further, but Keith was seeming to get it now.

“Do… do you want me to just start eating with you from now on?” Keith offered shyly.

Lance looked up at the offer, touched that Keith would offer something like that. “Sure, but it’s mostly just lunch, you know. Breakfast, I have an additional reason to go downstairs, and dinner, we mostly just all eat, so that leaves everyone to fend for themselves for lunch,” Lance said.

“All right,” Keith said, happy to help his friend out. “Shiro’s making dinner right now. Do you wanna go help him, and then we can eat together?” Keith wanted to make sure that Lance was eating tonight.

Lance chuckled a bit, seeing right through Keith’s tactics. “Sure, Keith,” he said with a smile, a genuine one this time. It felt good. “But uh… can we just keep this between us? I don’t really want to worry the others right now.”

Keith frowned a bit before coming to a quick decision, “Sure, but as long as you tell them eventually.”

Lance agreed to this condition, and they went downstairs to help Shiro with dinner before Allura got home. When she did, they ate together, Hunk and Pidge having returned from their robotics event earlier that evening. They had lots of stories from the tournament, and their excited chatter filled the dinner table as Lance finally ate some food, and had a person willing to go out of his way to eat with him.


End file.
